UVA Children's Hospital

A network of pediatric health care facilities operating under the
umbrella of the University of Virginia Health System, the University's
Children's Hospital is a "hospital without walls," dedicated to
providing comprehensive inpatient and outpatient care for infants,
children, and adolescents in a family-centered environment.

Last year, there were more than 3,000 admissions to the inpatient
units of the Children's Hospital and more than 60,000 outpatient visits
to our ambulatory clinics, with patients coming from Virginia and
beyond.

Inpatient and outpatient visits range from the simplest newborn
check-up to complex medical procedures like liver, lung, or heart
transplants and complex neurosurgery.

Key Components of the UVA Children's Hospital

General Wards

37 beds on two wards: one for infants, another for older children
and adolescents

Newborn Intensive Care Unit

State-of-the-art facility with 45 NICU and Intermediate Care
Nursery beds served by a hospital-based, ground and air neonatal
transport system

2 general pediatrics clinics (Northridge and Orange), each within a
few minutes of the University, that together serve about 24,000
patients annually

The University's First Pediatrician

The Children's Hospital and the Health System are both part of the
University of Virginia, a
state-funded university nurtured by Thomas Jefferson as the "hobby of
my old age," as he put it.

Answering Jefferson's call, 26 year-old
Robley Dunglison, a specialist in obstetrics and pediatrics, left
his home in England to become the University's first professor of
anatomy when the "academical village" first began receiving students in
1825.

Even at this young
age, Dunglison was already a well-known writer. The last work he wrote
before leaving England was Commentaries on the Diseases of the
Stomach and Bowels of Children, intended "as a commencement of a
treatise or series of treatises on the diseases of children," and which
advocated several heroic measures. But Dunglison also expressed that
quality incumbent on all good physicians: humility. In the preface he
wrote:

"At a future period, it is
the intention of the author to resume the consideration of some other
of those diseases, which are incident to children: not under the
arrogant expectation of being able to communicate much important
information from his own stores, but in accordance with the motto at
the head of these prefatory observations: Facem exiguam accendere,
qua alii egregiis animi dotibus ornati opus imperfectum limato suo
ingenio perpoliant. In other words, 'Kindle a slender flame by
which others blessed with eminent qualities of mind may brighten an
imperfect work with their own elegant talent.' "

In addition to serving as Thomas Jefferson's personal physician,
Dunglison translated and edited a number of European medical texts. In
1832, he published his Human Physiology, a volume described by
The American Journal of Medical Sciences as "the most complete
and satisfactory system of Physiology in the English language." Over
the next twenty-six years it went through eight editions, and justly
helped to solidify his reputation as the "Father of American
Physiology."